Le Tour de France: mtbchick goes Road Bike Action

I know. It seems heretical of me to write for a magazine called “Road Bike Action”. The bottom line is, I know road bikes well, I know the road well, and I have been following Le Tour for quite a few years. When I lived in Mammoth back in 2000 and trained indoors from time to time, I watched the Lance v. Pantani over and over to the sounds of over-under intervals (intervals where you ride just over, then just under your Lactate Threshold for a while, its tres dificile!). I’ve logged thousands of miles on the road bike, and have had the luxury of testing a few different bikes over the years. So technically, and technically keeping in mind I’ve wrenched on a few road bikes over the years, I can be road bike chick, too.

Funny, it’s always Lance v. X. Lance v. Pantani, Lance v. Ullrich, Lance v. Contador, Lance v. Himself. It’s always about “The Look”, the exchange of words, the “Pout of 2009″, the name calling.

I take an astonishingly deep interest in Le Tour this year. I am officially working for Road Bike Action for the Tour, specifically air traffic controller for the world’s greatest sporting event. I invite you to visit me along with RBA Editor Zap, Chris Henry, Patrick Brady, Michael White and Bobke (Bob Roll) over at the Road Bike Action web site for our Tour fun.

And while you’re getting in the mood, don’t forget we have some amazing Le Tour de France art by Keira Dooley, which if you live in SoCal can be seen in person at Velo Studio. You may also purchase and view works privately by calling me, Tonya, at 626.993.4383.

I’ll keep you informed of the goings-on in Le Tour, and don’t forget to check back, because I am going to provide you with my full, unedited, uncensored analysis of how I think Le Tour will turn out!

My first contribution, which I did not entirely write on my own, is a quick talk about Stage 3- and whether or not it was a good idea for Vaughters and his Garmin-Transitions team to skip the Recon mission. We’ll know by Wednesday if he was right. I hope you enjoy, read it here!

Don’t worry, I’ll still be getting dirty. I just have a day job of sorts now that has more to do with road bikes than mountain bikes.

namaste

-mtbchick, uh, rbachick